by Gill Pringle
Left alone in the lakeside home he built for her, Beth suffers nightmares; disturbing visions of a presence in the house calling to her, beckoning her with a ghostly allure. Against the advice of her friends, she begins digging into her husband’s belongings, searching for answers.
If Hall, 39, has never had a haunted experience, she remains open-minded.
A prolific actress, she also recently made her directorial debut with Passing – based on Nella Larsen’s 1920s Harlem Renaissance novel that explores the practice of racial passing – starring Ruth Negga and Tessa Thompson.
We caught up with Hall, who has worked in a variety of genres, starring in The Gift, The Town and, most recently, Godzilla vs. Kong.
What were your thoughts when you first read the script for The Night House?
“I though this is scary – and also fun. I think there were some aspects of the script that I thought were very intelligent and sensitive in regards to a depiction of a woman dealing with grief and trying to rationalise and come to terms with a catastrophic event that’s happened four days before the movie starts. But within that credible depiction of something very real and serious, there was also an opportunity for a truly cinematic, fun experience; something that people could go to together and scream and giggle about the fact that they’re screaming and go on a bit of a roller coaster ride, which I think is as valid as all the serious stuff.”
You’re acting alone for much of The Night House. How was that?
“There was a physical aspect to it that was very intense, having to imagine the physical effects and the ‘entity’, and then contorting my body in certain ways to deal with that. As an actor, I was a little scared because it is essentially a one-person show. There are wonderful supporting actors in it but a lot of it is me in a house doing things and carrying a story by myself. That’s something I had not done before and found a bit terrifying in a positive way. I was intrigued to do that.”
That sounds pretty challenging as an actor?
“I knew it was gonna be challenging going into it. I thought, well I’ve never done this before. I’ll give this a go. I don’t think I even guessed appropriately how challenging it would be. There’s a strange thing you don’t entirely realise as an actor is that you derive an awful lot of energy and stamina and creativity from the people that you’re working with. It’s a bit like if you’re at a party and someone comes in who has a lot of charisma and, suddenly, the party gets really great and you’re all bouncing off the energy. So, this was a bit like being at a party with no guests – but you still have to make the party good, which is just exhausting!”
Were there any other reasons you were attracted to this role?
“There were many reasons, many challenges, and many factors. I suppose I was intrigued and perhaps naively seduced about the idea of doing a film that was basically me and it turned out to be an awful lot to shoulder. But I’m a sucker for signing up for something that’s gonna really use me and is gonna be tough and put me through it. Don’t ask me why. I’ve got no idea. But I am. And often there’s just more to do in these sort of films as an actor that feels sort of scary in regards to what your capabilities are. And you don’t know if you’re gonna be able to pull it off. And I like going into something with that feeling and enjoyed it enormously.”
In preparing for this role as Beth, did you reference any horror films or have any influences?
“I don’t know that I had any specific influences for the character, per se. But I’m certainly influenced and inspired by certain movies in the genre that I love, including The Changeling from the ‘70s where a man is the central character and he’s haunted, so I re-watched that.”
Talk about working with director David Bruckner?
“I really had a really great time with him. It’s very rare that you work with a director who is so consistent about the genre that they want to work in. In a funny way, I mean, he’s very specific. Like, this is his thing. He does horror and he understands it. And he knows how to manipulate and plot and lay all the foundations to create the jump scares and do all the things that you need. He’s also incredibly smart and emotionally intuitive and the blend of those two things I think is really exciting and show in his work. I’d seen his last film, The Ritual, and I was absolutely flabbergasted by how scary that film was. I just think he’s a real talent.”
Was it hard acting against things that weren’t necessarily actually there like in the scene where you’re attacked in the bathroom?
“The honest answer is that it was kind of funny. We were doing a lot of things on the fly and getting shots. And it was a quick shoot and all the sort of tough things about independent filmmaking, and when it came to doing that scene, it wasn’t like there was someone choreographing it, so the initial idea of me having this sort of interaction/romantic encounter with an invisible presence was essentially just me improvising it which was fairly embarrassing. I mean, I wasn’t embarrassed because I realised pretty quickly that I was gonna look silly. And I just sort of accepted that and knew that everyone would laugh at me, and I just got on with it. But, after a while, it became sort of strangely liberating. It felt like doing a kind of intuitive dance which was nothing like anything I’ve ever done before as an actor, and it was nice to use your physicality in that respect.”
You’ve done a lot of genre films in your career. Is there a particular appeal?
“I think there is huge opportunity for genre to tackle not-genre subjects like grief or death, these large, existential questions of life that are sometimes things that we find difficult to talk about as people, and sometimes can be more fruitfully addressed if they are dealt with indirectly. The veil of genre over them means that you’re not dealing with it head-on. And that can sometimes be more rewarding than a drama that deals with them straight on.”
Why do horror audiences enjoy seeing a woman scream on screen?
“There’s a fine line between, do we just enjoy watching women scream? Or what is it? So, I think that the thing that I loved about this one was that it takes existing tropes around horror, of seeing a woman being a victim and being frightened, and inverts it a little bit. Because Beth isn’t entirely a victim. She had a terrible thing happen to her but she’s now investigating and wants to get to the realities of what happened to her husband. But she also wants to get to the bottom of what’s going on in her brain, how she’s processing this grief. And because of that, she is quite reckless and runs towards danger. She doesn’t leave the house because she is ready to go through anything. She’s standing there saying come and get me. ‘I want a ghost! I wanna see my husband. I wanna know what’s going on. I’m ready for it’. Which is quite an inversion of the standard trope. And it makes it quite frightening because I think there’s only one thing scarier than a woman being scared in the house – it’s a woman being scared in the house who wants to be scared, because, you don’t know what she’s gonna do.”
The Night House is in cinemas August 19, 2021
